Slides from ICA 2012

1. COMMUNITY STRUCTURE IN
CONGRESSIONAL
CONVERSATION NETWORKS
Or, the paper formerly known as
Relationships Among Twitter Conversation
Networks, Language Use, and Congressional
Voting
Libby Hemphill, Jahna Otterbacher, and
Matthew Shapiro

2. What do we expect to see?
• Interaction with constituents 5,8,10
• Polarization, divided communities 1,3,4,8
• More activity among Republicans 9
• More activity among Senators 9
• Similar presentations among men and women 7

3. Legend for graphs
Edge Properties
Color Gray = same party
Yellow = different parties
Node Properties
Color Red = Republican
Blue = Democrat
Yellow = Independent
Shape Solid square = House
Solid circle = Senate
Size In degree
Opacity Out degree

4. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
Congress mentioning each other:
Excluding self-loops

5. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
Congress mentioning each other:
including self-loops

6. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
House only

7. April 12, 2012 Shapiro, Hemphill, and Otterbacher
Senate only

8. Predicting Connections
(1) (2) (3) (4)
crossparty crosschamber crossparty crosschamber
Republican -0.308*** 0.107** -0.325*** 0.0908**
(-12.86) (3.27) (-13.15) (2.71)
Senate 0.172*** 2.715*** 0.180*** 2.724***
(5.46) (74.83) (5.69) (74.48)
Male 0.0925** 0.0944*
(2.79) (2.12)
_cons -0.230*** -1.943*** -0.299*** -2.014***
(-12.21) (-71.46) (-9.62) (-46.26)
N = 29,597
t statistics in parentheses
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

9. Results
• Low density indicates low cohesion 6
• Republicans, Senators, and males more likely to
mention across chambers
• Senators and men more likely to mention across
party lines
• Conservatives mention each other more 1
• Explicitly engage small subset of those under
surveillance 2

10. Takeaways
• New medium, not new behavior 11
• Congress less polarized than political blogosphere 1
• Echo chamber more than broadcast medium

11. Contact us
• Libby Hemphill (libby.hemphill@iit.edu)
• Jahna Otterbacher (jotterba@iit.edu)
• Matt Shapiro (mshapir2@iit.edu)
• Illinois Institute of Technology
• info@casmlab.org
• http://www.casmlab.org/projects/publicofficials/

12. References
1. Adamic, L. A., & Glance, N. (2005). The political blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. election: Divided they blog. Proceedings
of the 3rd International Workshop on Link Discovery (LinkKDD ’05) (pp. 36–43). New York, NY, USA: ACM. Retrieved
from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1134277
2. Bakshy, E., Hofman, J. M., Watts, D. J., & Mason, W. A. (2011). Everyone’s an influencer: Quantifying influence on Twitter.
Proceedings of the fourth ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM ’11) (pp. 65-74). New
York: ACM.
3. Conover, M. D., Ratkiewicz, J., Francisco, M., Goncalves, B., Flammini, A., & Menczer, F. (2011). Political polarization on
Twitter. Proceedings of the Fifth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 89-96). Palo Alto: AAAI
Press.
4. Iyengar, S., & Hahn, K. S. (2009). Red Media, Blue Media: Evidence of Ideological Selectivity in Media Use. Journal of
Communication, 59(1), 19-39. Retrieved from http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.01402.x
5. Johnson, D. W. (2004). Congress Online: Bridging the Gap Between Citizens and Their Representatives (Google eBook)
(p. 242). Psychology Press. Retrieved from http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0vgVHQTpygkC&pgis=1
6. Livne, A., Simmons, M. P., Adar, E., & Adamic, L. A. (2011). The party is over here: Structure and content in the 2010
election. 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM). Palto Alto: AAAI Press.
7. Niven, D., & Zilber, J. (2001). Do Women and Men in Congress Cultivate Different Images? Evidence from Congressional
Web Sites. Political Communication, 18(4), 395-405. Routledge. Retrieved from
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10584600152647100
8. Parmelee, J. H., & Bichard, S. L. (2011). Politics and the Twitter Revolution: How Tweets Influence the Relationship
Between Political Leaders and the Public (Google eBook) (Vol. 2011, p. 247). Lexington Books. Retrieved from
http://books.google.com/books?id=KPn5Pnkhx7sC&pgis=1
9. Wang, (Bryan) M., Hanna, A., Sayre, B., Yang, J., Mirer, M., Kim, M., & Shah, D. (2011). Who is following me? An analysis
of candidate egocentric networks on Twitter in the 2010 midterm elections. 2011 Midwest Political Science Association
Annual National Conference. Chicago: MPSA.
10. Williams, C. B., & Gulati, G. J. (2010). Communicating with constituents in 140 characters or less: Twitter and the diffusion
of technology innovation in the United States Congress . SSRN eLibrary. Chicago: SSRN. Retrieved from
http://ssrn.com/paper=1817053
11. Xenos, M. A., & Foot, K. A. (2005). Politics as usual, or politics unusual? Position taking and dialogue on campaign
websites in the 2002 U.S. Elections. Journal of Communication, 55(1), 169-185. Retrieved from
http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2005.tb02665.x